The number of arrests made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dropped by nearly 20 percent between June and July, despite Stephen Miller pushing the agency to detain thousands of migrants a day.
Figures from the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) show that ICE booked an average of 990 arrests per day from July 1 to July 27, a sharp 19 percent drop from the daily rate of 1,224 arrests recorded in June.
Both months fall far short of the 3,000-a-day arrests Miller has demanded to fulfill President Donald Trump’s plan to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. The White House deputy chief of staff, credited as the architect of many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies, was reportedly so aggressive he even threatened to fire ICE field office leaders who ranked in the bottom 10 percent for migrant arrests.
Trump administration attorneys are now walking back claims in court that Miller ever set such an ambitious arrest target, despite Miller explicitly telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity he was putting it in place in May.
In late July, a federal judge asked Department of Justice attorney Yaakov Roth whether ICE was under pressure to meet an arrest quota, and if that meant people were being rounded up based on race or ethnicity to hit the numbers.
The DoJ has now denied the existence of a daily quota for immigration arrests in Wednesday filings to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“DHS has confirmed that neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that ICE or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law,” wrote a DOJ attorney, according to Politico.
As noted by Axios, the July dip in ICE arrests also followed backlash to anti-ICE immigration raid protests in Los Angeles, as well as Trump’s unexpected call to ease immigration enforcement immigration enforcement for farmworkers and hotel staff to help pressure on agriculture and the leisure industry as both sectors that heavily rely on migrant labor.
In a statement, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that ICE arrests were down in July, but claimed the drop was closer to 10 percent from 31,000 in June to 27,000.
“Despite a historic number of injunctions—including the (temporary restraining order) in Los Angeles—ICE continues to arrest the worst of the worst,” McLaughlin told Axios.
“From gang members and terrorists to pedophiles, everyday ICE is removing these barbaric criminal illegal aliens from American communities. Secretary [Kristi] Noem has been clear: nothing will stop us from carrying out the President and American people’s mandate to carry out the largest deportation of criminal illegal aliens in American history.”
The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from The Daily Beast.
